Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis

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An adventurous journey exploring an unknown Bombay, the throbbing heart of the artistic life of the Indian metropolis, surrounded by drugs and its notorious bordellos: this is the first novel of the famous Indian poet and musician Jeet Thayil, who was born in Kerela in 1959. Narcopolis, published in Italy by Neri Pozza, takes place from the seventies to the eighties and focuses on the passage from opium to heroin addiction. The author himself experienced this and now reveals its secrets.

As the Daily Telegraph writes: "Thayil's empathy, combined with his fluid style, conveys something to us that is more than the classic cycle of healing and relapse of its heroes." The eccentric, poetic plot is full of social commitment and gives a voice to artists, philosophers, poets, and prostitutes who spend their bizarre days smoking opium. The author wanted to give a decidedly innovative slant to the city where he lived for many years before moving to Delhi, portraying a grotesque Bombay that is less nostalgic than in traditional Indian literature.

In an interview with an Indian newspaper, you said that you spent two decades in Bombay as an alcohol and drug addict, but then you got a second chance. What was the trigger within you that let you escape from that world? I've tried to escape from the tunnel of drugs many times. I did rehab thirty-one times without success. Then I enrolled in a methadone program in New York in 2002 and I finally cleaned up my act. I held a job when I was an addict, although it's true that addiction is a job in itself. As soon as I stopped taking drugs, I quit working because I no longer needed a steady income. That's when I was finally able to write full-time.

To quote one of your characters, "We can honor the dead only if we repeat their names." Is that why you wrote the book?Honoring the dead is certainly one of the reasons for Narcopolis. At one point, while I was writing the book, I realized that I was creating a genuine monument for an era that had vanished and for people who are gone but, in some way, that's what makes a novel. The past is a foreign land, and so is a story.

You've been associated with figures such as Denis Johnson, William Burroughs and Robert Bolano. What do you think you've inherited from India's literary tradition? I understand the reason for these comparisons, but I don't completely agree with them. If there's one author who could have inspired me for Narcopolis, it would have certainly been Dostoyevsky. I wanted to write a sort of 19th century Russian novel because that world has so much in common with modern Indian society: a remnant of feudalism, an almost obsessive fixation with religion, and great respect for the written word. I don't know if I have anything in common with Indian literature. I don't read many Indian books. The only Indian writers I read are poets: Adil Jussawalla, Dom Moraes, Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Kolatkar, AK Ramanujan, Keki Daruwalla, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Eunice De Souza, Gopal Honnalgere, Lawrence Bantleman, Srinivas Rayaprol, and many others.

After the success of your novel, are you planning to write others? I've other projects in the works. My libretto for the opera Babar in London is on a worldwide tour this year. I also composed music for my band Sridhar/Thayil. Our first album STD was released last month and is available on Bandcamp. I'm also working on my second novel. Working title: The Book of Broken Saints. It's about sex and God, but not necessarily in that order.